I was happily reminded of how pleasant
much environmental history is to read, particularly that written by some of its
earliest proponents: Cronon, Donald Worster, Roderick Nash,
and co.Many people would undoubtedly
disagree, but I find an almost extraordinary clarity in much of the more “traditional”
writing on environmental history (a history which I know some find
stodgy).In a world in which to my mind
many people think that narratives stand in the way of a good argument, or fail
to distinguish between the ability to make a significant or important point or
argument, and the ability to do so in a stylish, discernible fashion, the
writing in this sub-discipline stands out to me.

Historians both within and without the
environmental history sub-field have strong feelings about where it should be
going.Some believe it should maintain a
distinctive character, others believe that it should be better “integrated”
into the discipline, or that it is too declensionist—that is, that because it
arose in reaction to an era of environmental plunder, that it is preoccupied
with environmental decline to the extent that it is a bit blinkered.

Nonetheless, there is something about
the sub-field that makes the writing of it special.The writing of its best practitioners is
studiously careful not because—as some seem to think—the subject matter is
simple, but precisely because it is not.For many people—academics as much as anyone else—the idea of taking “the
environment” or any of its features or attributes as the subject of historical
inquiry is (and certainly was, although it has become less heretical over time)
novel and perhaps even troubling.

I took a graduate course on imperial
history here at Berkeley, and we spent a couple of weeks using environmental
history as an interpretive lens.Many
people found it unintuitive, and some reacted strongly against it.I took an American Environmental History
course as an undergraduate from David
Igler, and because my research subject is in some respects ‘environmental’
I’ve read a fair bit around the subject, which only goes some way towards easing
the difficulty of grappling with some of the original concepts.

It’s my working hypothesis that because
their audience was always unfamiliar, frequently sceptical, and occasionally
outright hostile, and because they were writing at a moment when their
historical material was the subject of intense social, cultural, and political
debate, environmental historians took greater care in choosing their
terminology, in explaining their premises and use of evidence, and in constructing
their arguments.Their writing, in this
way, tended to demonstrate what was for them a process of discovery, and they chronicled
that process carefully.

Put another way, the writing of many
environmental historians tends to be dialogic, but not in the conventional
academic sense of operating in constant engagement with fellow-travellers
within the confines of a discipline, or even academia broadly.Instead, much writing in the field actively
engages in a similar process with readers.You can see how writers (because yes, good historians wear that hat as
well) anticipate various lines of thinking on the part of their readers
(because yes, ideally historians have some of those) to refine their point

Their own thought process, the process
whereby they construct their arguments and arrive at conclusions, thereby
becomes more transparent and comprehensible to readers.Reading is like other problem-solving
processes.It is more difficult to interpret
a “finished” text, which tends to be more closed to readers, than one in which
the process of its construction is still in some evidence.

In this way, I feel that environmental
historians are often more successful than their counterparts in other
historical sub-disciplines at conveying fairly sophisticated points and
arguments in a way that is accessible and “popular”, to put a positive spin on
a word often used within academia in a derogatory fashion.

Re-reading some of Cronon’s work is, I
hope, going to make me more self-conscious as I continue my own historical
writing at 7 a.m. tomorrow morning in the Free Speech Movement Cafe!

About Me

I am from Northern California, and am the fifth generation of my family to have lived in the Golden State. Now I live next-door in the Silver State, where I research and write about colonialism and decolonization in Africa, teach European, African, environmental, and colonial history, and write this blog, mostly about politics, sometimes about history, and occasionally about travels or research.